Shepard Can Lose in Mass Effect 3

[Fusionxl]

Well, if you didn't make the stake wall so fucking high it wouldn't be such a bloody problem. Geez.

 

[Triforceformer]

If I had any interest in this series, I don't think I'd want to be told that I can "Lose" in one of the endings. It would have been such a cool surprise to see that you can't be an asshole and the world gets saved anyway.

 

[WarpZone]

I dunno about this. This is the same problem I've *always* had with the Fallout franchise (even though I still Play Fallout 2 and 3 from time to time.) They make success or failure contingent on some kinda obscure bullshit they don't tell you about ahead of time. Effectively detaching the game's win state from its core mechanics and making it impossible to succeed without cheating by consulting a guide.

Sometimes, this happens by accident. In Fallout 3 you can shoot quest-givers in the face by accident while you're still learning the controls. In Fallout 2 it was much worse, with entire towns committing suicide because you tried to pickpocket someone, they shot at you and missed, which hit someone else, which made them fire back at the person who shot them and miss, until before you know it every necessary story element in a 2-mile radius is either dead or trying to murder you.

Other times, it's on purpose... the Creepers in minecraft spring to mind. (And coming soon, if Notch's blag is to be believed, shadow guys who steal your stuff and murder you if you so much as look at them funny... hey, isn't that kinda racist?)

It can suck even when there's no in-game consequence for screwing up. I hated the way your guy in Prototype would gracefully float to the ground and then suddenly decide to STOMP the last five feet, presumably for no other reason than to kill civilians because he's a dick. Or when I very slowly drove the tank out of the military base, just minding my own business, going very slowly, you guys have seen tanks driving around your city all week, nothing to see here... and people in the distance were panicking, screaming, and running towards the tank, the game desperately telegraphing the events that would have made sense if I'd just plowed forwards into the populace. Yeah, I gave up trying to take the game seriously at that point and just started firing shells into the crowd. Consider my immersion shattered.

In short, why do game developers think unintended consequences are fun? They're seriously not fun. They actively detract from fun every time. A little plot twist now and then is fine, sure, but don't make your goddamned world so fragile that I can ruin everything by accident. Don't force me to read 5 FAQs and an entire forum full of intricate character builds just so I know how to play your game correctly. And don't give me the "Shepard fucked up" ending when I clearly clicked on the "Don't fuck up" button.

 

[Actino]

Why the fuck is everyone on this post so negative about the game? Even if this feature is bad, it's still going to be an amazing game.

 

[Zeraiya]

I personally think that this possible ending is brilliant. It's a lot more ballsy and actually gives a meaning to the final game.

Would the game honestly be more appealing if it held your hand and no matter what you did the world would be saved?

Please.

 

[WarpZone]

I personally think that this possible ending is brilliant. It's a lot more ballsy and actually gives a meaning to the final game.

Would the game honestly be more appealing if it held your hand and no matter what you did the world would be saved?

Please.

It's not the fact that the bad ending exists. It's the fact that I don't trust the developers to put the bad ending in a place where gameplay would logically lead up to it. I suspect there's a 50/50 chance the game will just quietly decide you've tripped one of 5 or 6 conditions which will trigger the bad ending, but not tell you about it until 40 hours later. Or like another commenter said, giving you the bad ending as "punishment" for working your ass off to play a Paragon run. Or doing what Fable 3 did and magically skipping ahead a month to prevent you from collecting the taxes you would have legitimately earned which, according to everything the game had told you up to that point, would have gotten you the good ending without being artificially forced to make 'evil' decisions. Or even going the Metroid route and tying it to something as pedantic as how many hours you spent playing the game.

If you need a walkthrough to avoid the bad ending, it's a serious drag on gameplay. If avoiding the bad ending is insultingly easy, what was the point? Pulling something like this off in a way that actually makes the game more meaningful without making it less fun is an incredibly delicate balancing act. Yes, their writers have the writing pedigree to pull it off, but that's no guarantee that they will. People like me are basically thinking "What if they screw it up? Then you've got an excellent game with a shit ending."

It just seems like a risky design decision to me. And by 'risky' I mean it could backfire on the developers and really make the product worse, not just annoy the players who happen to get that ending.

Then again, it could all be a publicity stunt to get us talking about the game, and the actual bad ending will turn out to be not even a big deal.

 

[mip0]

I usually don't click on these because I'm afraid there'll be spoilers. This time there was a major spoiler in the actual headline, what I need to read before I decide to read the entire article or not.

 

[PunkRex]

I can barely decide what to have for lunch, this game may be the end of me.

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

In Fallout 2 it was much worse, with entire towns committing suicide because you tried to pickpocket someone, they shot at you and missed, which hit someone else, which made them fire back at the person who shot them and miss, until before you know it every necessary story element in a 2-mile radius is either dead or trying to murder you.

Oh man that brought back bad memories! I spent hours unable to do sh1t because of something like that.

 

[Pandaman1911]

The earth and all of the known universe is at stake?


...no pressure.

 

[Alpha Maeko]

What's this? Bioware created a new, revolutionary game function in which the player loses? And they intend to call it "Game Over"?

BRILLIANT !

(I kid.)

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

I personally feel like this "Possibility of losing" will be yet another tactic in herding people to pick Renegade or Paragon at the start of the game and stick with it the entire rest of the way.

This may just be due to the fact that Mass Effect 2 has left me extremely pessimistic about the continuing use of their essentially flawed moral choice system. In all seriousness though I can definitely see a person 'losing' at the end of the game because they didn't have enough damn Paragon/Renegade points to force someone to do their bidding because they were actually ROLE PLAYING in an ROLE PLAYING GAME.

If you think about it the only way you could lose your crew would be a combination of bad decisions, and not getting the crew's loyalty through a mission OR losing their loyalty cause you didn't have enough DAMN Renegade/Paragon points since you were ROLE PLAYING in a ROLE PLAYING GAME rather than being a mindless twat or a mindless do-gooder.

Anyone else feeling pessimistic about this news?

 

[Iron Mal]

I think a lot of people here are missing the point of the 'Shepard dies' ending being a BAD ENDING.

The idea is you aren't supposed to be trying to get it since it's, you know, the BAD ENDING.

This isn't supposed to be a legitimate ending so much as the game giving you the middle finger for fucking up or failing repeatedly (much like it was in ME2 and pretty much every other game that has had a BAD ENDING to date).

 

[AlternatePFG]

-snip-

Frankly, roleplaying in Mass Effect is pointless. I really like the games, but honestly, BioWare did everything in their power simply so that you could not play that way. I don't particularly care though, because the Mass Effect series will always be bad as RPGs.

 

[AngryBritishAce]

Interested again. Though personally, I would actually prefer a no win scenario. No matter what you do, how hard you fight, who you recruit, all you can do is minimize losses and buy time for a few ships of refugees to escape while the universe burns.

In another game it would work, however, Mass Effect has many loyal fans. And many of them will go into a huge nerd rage when they realise they've played through 3 whole games, taking up so much of their time (well spent, though) to find out that they failed and suck.

For a game like Halo REACH, it's good. Because you know right from the start you're going into a fight you cannot win. Have a fail ending for mass effect if you want, but don't take away everything else, or BioWare will get blown over by the hate.

 

[BrotherRool]

You had to just not care to lose in ME2 and it'll probably be the same in ME3 but I guess I'm okay with that

 

[Nimcha]

Wait ... exactly the same feature as ME2 had? Only now they expect me to believe that holograms can stab? I'm sorry. I liked Mass Effect when it was still slightly Science Fiction.

With "visceral" "edgy" "insert bad hype here" stabby holographic UIs they completely lost me on Science part.

Wait, and that didn't happen at the very start of the first game, when 'element zero' was introduced? Please, of all reasons to not buy the game this is the worst I've ever heard.

This is kinda cool, now I will do everything in my power to make sure my Shepard will survive. I think I'd cry if she'd die!

 

[Diana Kingston-Gabai]

I dunno about this. This is the same problem I've *always* had with the Fallout franchise (even though I still Play Fallout 2 and 3 from time to time.) They make success or failure contingent on some kinda obscure bullshit they don't tell you about ahead of time. Effectively detaching the game's win state from its core mechanics and making it impossible to succeed without cheating by consulting a guide.

Fair enough - "Guide Dang It" is a trope for a reason - but in ME2 you have characters telling you in-game that if you want your team functioning at 100%, you might want to help them clear out some baggage that's holding them back. Granted, it's a suggestion and you don't have to do it... but in that case, be prepared to face the consequences.

Let's just hope it isn't as simplistic and annoying as last time. In Mass Effect 2, you had to *try* to fail in order to make Shepard die. If you made a single right decision, you still lived.

Actually, to get Shepard and everyone else killed, all you have to do is follow orders: recruit your team, go to Horizon, get the Reaper IFF and attack the Collectors.

To look at it from another angle, let's focus on the final mission. If you're not a completist, you might not have bothered to get the ship upgrades when they become available: they don't affect your gameplay in any way and you could use the money to improve weapons and health instead. That's three squadmates lost before you even reach the Collector Base.

After that, it comes down to how well you know your NPCs. Sending Tali or Legion to hack the gate seems like a no-brainer, but if you send Mordin because hey, he's a scientist? That's another one down. Zaeed and Grunt might seem like tempting choices for team leaders: they're tough, they're fighters, etc. The only way you'd know they're wrong for the job is if you stopped by and listened to Zaeed's stories, every single one of which ends with his entire team dying while he gets away, or figured out that Grunt doesn't really understand what it means to be responsible for other people.

The game even misdirects you at one point, when Miranda tells you that any biotic could keep the shield up. If you haven't talked to her, you'd have missed the part where she admits she sometimes makes mistakes that result in people getting killed. And if you take her at face value, you lose another team member.

In other words, it's very easy to make mistakes during the suicide mission, and the casualties add up. If you make it to the end with less than 2 surviving squad mates, Shepard dies.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

I dunno about this. This is the same problem I've *always* had with the Fallout franchise (even though I still Play Fallout 2 and 3 from time to time.) They make success or failure contingent on some kinda obscure bullshit they don't tell you about ahead of time. Effectively detaching the game's win state from its core mechanics and making it impossible to succeed without cheating by consulting a guide.

Fair enough - "Guide Dang It" is a trope for a reason - but in ME2 you have characters telling you in-game that if you want your team functioning at 100%, you might want to help them clear out some baggage that's holding them back. Granted, it's a suggestion and you don't have to do it... but in that case, be prepared to face the consequences.

Let's just hope it isn't as simplistic and annoying as last time. In Mass Effect 2, you had to *try* to fail in order to make Shepard die. If you made a single right decision, you still lived.

Actually, to get Shepard and everyone else killed, all you have to do is follow orders: recruit your team, go to Horizon, get the Reaper IFF and attack the Collectors.

To look at it from another angle, let's focus on the final mission. If you're not a completist, you might not have bothered to get the ship upgrades when they become available: they don't affect your gameplay in any way and you could use the money to improve weapons and health instead. That's three squadmates lost before you even reach the Collector Base.

After that, it comes down to how well you know your NPCs. Sending Tali or Legion to hack the gate seems like a no-brainer, but if you send Mordin because hey, he's a scientist? That's another one down. Zaeed and Grunt might seem like tempting choices for team leaders: they're tough, they're fighters, etc. The only way you'd know they're wrong for the job is if you stopped by and listened to Zaeed's stories, every single one of which ends with his entire team dying while he gets away, or figured out that Grunt doesn't really understand what it means to be responsible for other people.

The game even misdirects you at one point, when Miranda tells you that any biotic could keep the shield up. If you haven't talked to her, you'd have missed the part where she admits she sometimes makes mistakes that result in people getting killed. And if you take her at face value, you lose another team member.

In other words, it's very easy to make mistakes during the suicide mission, and the casualties add up. If you make it to the end with less than 2 surviving squad mates, Shepard dies.

It's difficult to make that many mistakes. I've never seen a thread from speed gamers on either the Bioware boards or GameFAQs saying "I'm dead... what gives?!" Most of those types of threads lost people by choosing a bad fire team leader and losing someone at the 'hold the line' phase of the mission. That's two people. Everything else was obvious. When ship upgrades came up, Jacob makes it very explicit that people will die if you don't improve the armor. Garrus makes it obvious that you can't stand up to a collector cruiser with your current weapons. Tali doesn't say anything nearly as dramatic, but by this point you should get the picture.

 

[WarpZone]

Oh, okay then, it sounds like ME2 gave them plenty of experience in pulling off a bad ending RESPONSIBLY, with both game mechanics and story elements pointing you in the right direction. I now trust them to do it right in ME3. As long as they don't get all artsy-fartsy at the last second and decide to "subvert expectations" with some kind of untutorial, we should be good to go.

Looks like the OP was flamebait after all.